


Something Wicked...

by sexysigyn



Category: Crimson Peak (2015), Crimson Peak - Fandom, Sir Thomas Sharpe - Fandom, Thomas Sharpe - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Allerdale Hall, Crimson Peak, Cumbria, F/M, Gothic Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 22:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3626718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexysigyn/pseuds/sexysigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Nora Gantree is hired by Sir Thomas Sharpe to be a companion to his sister, Lucille, while he is travelling, but when she arrives at the crumbling Allerdale Hall in Cumbria, England, she can't shake the feeling that all is not what it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Wicked...

His eyes devoured her, pouring over every inch of the woman’s body from the lace trim on the violet hat that topped her coiffed chestnut hair, the sable trim on the black velvet coat, down to the very tips of her polished leather boots that just poked out under the hem of her eggplant-hued gown. The rustling of desiccated leaves on the rutted wooden floorboards was unnerving; the interior of Allerdale Hall was dank and smelled of old leather and damp paper. Even the huge hearth with a roaring fire in the room straight ahead could not chase away the cold, wet air that seemed to creep into one’s very soul. Thomas seemed rather un-affected by it, the woman noticed as a shiver ran down her spine. Anything could have been lurking above her. It was no later than half past two but the grand room in which she stood was at least three stories high, the upper floors veiled in shadows.

Sir Sharpe noticed his guest’s recalcitrance as she took slow steps further into the cavernous entry space. The ghosts were eerily quiet today. It was rare, incredibly so, for there to be anyone except himself and Lucille in the house and the siblings had grown acclimated to their preternatural presence. While menacing toward those few who were invited to the decaying house, he had never felt threatened by them. In fact, it was almost more alarming when he did not detect their immediate presence.

“I’ll show you to your room,” he offered, patiently waiting with his arm crooked as the woman took in her surroundings with wide blue eyes. His voice seemed to snap her out of her reverie. She gently slid her arm through his and allowed him to lead her up the stairs to a corridor on the second floor. Weak shafts of sunlight bled through the grimy window at the end, illuminating the particles of dust that danced in the stale air. Instinctively, Miss Nora Gantree grasped at her host’s worn velvet frock coat. This hall, with its heavy, overwrought Gothic carving, was creepy enough during the day. She knew once darkness fell it would be all the worse. The prospect of traversing this hall at night made her blood run cold but she could not spurn the Sharpe’s hospitality. Or the pay. The fee Sir Sharpe had offered her to be companion to Lucille during his trip abroad was too handsome to forgo.

Thomas paused at a door and turned the knob, holding it open for his guest. The furnishings looked comfortable enough but the yellowing wallpaper on the walls was ominous. It looked to have once been an expensive, eighteenth century Chinoiserie pattern of butterflies and flowers but the markings on the wings of the insects had the look of hundreds of eyes watching her every movement. A wooden mantle framed a hearth opposite the four-poster bed hung with slightly faded ink blue velvet curtains. Pulling her kid gloves off, finger by finger, Sir Sharpe gently set her suitcase on the floor in front of a bureau, wood blackened with age. “Take some time to freshen up, Miss Gantree. There will be tea in the parlour shortly.” He dipped his head and made for the door, pulling it closed with a click.

Nora moved to the bed again, untying the ribbons under her chin and dropping the chapeau on the mattress. There was a washstand in the corner with a mirror above it. After the train ride from London and subsequent carriage trip from the station, she felt enervated. Dipping her fingers into the porcelain ewer, she was pleasantly surprised to find the water cool and refreshing. Splashing some of it on her face to remove the road dust and patting her skin dry, her natural rosiness began returning to her cheeks. Pulling a bottle of lavender water from her carpetbag, Nora rubbed her hands together and dabbed a bit of scent on her wrists and behind her ears, inhaling deeply as the scent enveloped her, soothing her. It didn’t completely mask the faint odour of death that permeated the house but it lessened the effect.

Carrying her sewing basket, Nora retraced the route by which Thomas had led her to her room, inspecting the alcoves in the corridor. There were doors to other rooms, portals she left unopened. Walking alone made her uneasy. Anyone or anything could be behind any of those doors. She would be here some time, plenty of opportunity in which to familiarise herself with the layout. Portraits of long-dead relatives hung in dusty frames; some were wood, polished to a shine with the passage of time, and others were gilded, the gold paint flaking away from its base. The faces in the frames all seemed to look on Nora disapprovingly, even if their eyes were peering straight from the wood or canvas on which they were depicted. Their expressions were haughty, aloof, their faces all shrunken and pinched… although that could also have been the effect of the dim light.

The muffled clattering of a tea tray echoing from the vast open hall pulled Nora’s attention from her evaluation of a particularly proud-looking matron with a patrician nose and scarlet dress, the style of which placed her in the early Regency period. Grasping her basket tighter, she hitched up her gown and hurried down the steps and into the parlour.

Sir Thomas glanced up from the side table where he was preparing his tea, giving her a quick, close-lipped smile. Nora felt a blush creep up the back of her neck. He certainly was handsome and she was grateful that he would be leaving in several days. Tall, with waving dark brown, almost black, hair that just brushed the back of his collar. Eyes as clear blue as the skies above gave no hint to his true emotions but held such charisma that drew people to him. Certainly Nora had fallen under their spell when they met in London. Recently from Ireland and seeking work in England that wasn’t in the textile industry which had wrecked her mother’s health, Nora answered an ad in a London paper seeking a female companion. He was in London seeking to secure financing to reopen the mine his grandfather established in the 1850s. The family money had all but run out and desperate times called for desperate measures. Unfortunately, despite the lucrative shipping industry which relied on coal to power its ships and the steam engines that chugged from the northernmost points in Scotland to Penzance in Cornwall, there was not one institution in London willing to loan the Sharpes the money needed. Thus, in less than a week, he was off to America to follow so many other of his aristocratic peers in finding wealthy American socialites seeking titles. There was no grand title aside from Lady Sharpe of Allerdale Hall to accompany his ring but the lure of consorting with royalty was an irresistible draw.

“Have you settled into your room comfortably?” he inquired, glancing at Nora as he moved toward a long table at the far side of the room, the surface of which was covered by long, curling papers.

She nodded, stirring her own cup of steaming brew. “Yes, thank you. I think I shall be comfortable.” Physically, she thought. Far from emotionally secure.

“Lucille should be down soon. She is eager to meet you.”

Perhaps eager was not the word. Miss Sharpe’s chilly intensity seemed to fill the room when she entered, negating the restorative effects of the tea Miss Gantree was sipping. The deep teal of her dress and dark hair, so similar to that of her brother’s, seemed to blend into the background of this house. Her greeting was gracious enough when Thomas made introductions between the two women but her skin was clammy and unnaturally cold. Something felt off about her but Nora attributed it to the drafty old house. While not old, she was of an age most considered to be a spinster; perhaps that was the cause- or side effect of- of the bitterness she emanated. Whatever it was, the younger woman knew that her stay at Allerdale Hall would not be easy.

The trio sat in a heavy silence for some time, interrupted only by the chink of china or the scratching of a pen. At his table, Thomas was shuffling his papers, and Nora found herself more interested in whatever it was that he was doing than the sliver flash of the needle as she pulled and pushed it through the linen she was embroidering. Setting it aside and ignoring Lucille’s censuring look, Nora replaced her cup and saucer to the silver tray and walked over, taking a place beside Sir Thomas. “What are these?”

“Blueprints for improvements to the mining machinery. Most of it is outdated and what isn’t is too rusted to be of much use.”

Nora ran her fingers over one of the designs, careful not to smudge any notes he might have written. “What do you mine, if I might inquire?”

“Coal. Our father thought the mine depleted twenty years ago but there is still a significant vein recently discovered. I hope that should this resource be extracted, an old contract with the White Star Line by which our coal was used to help fuel their liners might be renewed. Unfortunately that cannot even be considered unless the mining operation is yielding again. In America I am hoping to find a business partner to be a ‘venture capitalist’ until it is self-sufficient.”

America was the best place for opportunity, Nora agreed. Several generations of cousins had emigrated to North America in search of the fabled golden streets. Most were farmers in the state of Michigan but her father had a brother who was making a decent life for himself and his family in the Irish community of Boston. If a poor man could improve his situation there, no doubt a man as charismatic as Sir Thomas could as well.

Lucille seemed a bit less uptight at dinner that evening, peppering Nora with questions. It was obvious that she was not overjoyed with the idea that her brother had paid a simple young Irish woman to be her companion but she did not say as much. Throughout the polite interrogation, Thomas had looked at Nora with a softness in his eyes. Just as she found him personable, he in turn found her appealing. She was healthy and sturdy, her skin flushed despite the lingering chill in the air. Pale blue eyes contrasted with her dark hair, set off magnificently by the dress of ice blue silk edged in fine white Irish lace. It occurred to him that a woman with as humble an origin as what she had professed should not have the means to afford such a frock but in truth she had purchased it the day before leaving London, using the down payment he had given her. The lace on the neckline and hem was handcrafted by her grandmother and bequeathed to Nora to form part of her dowry, paltry as it would be. Sewing it to a dress almost as fine as any young society woman might wear seemed to be a better usage; the promise of several yards of sentimental fabric did not attract suitors.

Sleep was elusive that first night. While Lucille and Thomas slept soundly in their rooms, Nora tossed and turned, tangling her limbs in the sheets. Never falling into a deep enough sleep to induce dreams, she gave up as the black sky outside lightened to grey. Sitting in front of the window, she watched as a ribbon of purple spread across the horizon, layers of orange and rose joining it as the sun peaked just over the bleak landscape.

“Shall I take you on a tour of the house?” Thomas asked over breakfast. Nora nodded, excited to have the opportunity to spend more time with him. What she had seen of the house so far was more than enough but it would be beneficial to know her way around better. Exits, stairs, what facilities were contained within… Nora wanted to be prepared if an occasion arose when she needed to make a quick escape.

“There are areas of the house which are… unsafe,” he explained as he opened the gate to a cage-like lift on the topmost floor. “There is more house than resources needed to care for it.”

The room into which the elevator ascended was filled with sunlight, bright but weak, and dusty old toys that obviously hadn’t been touched in decades. “The nursery. This is where Lucille and I spent all our time growing up. Until Mother died, at least.”

“My condolences,” Nora muttered, running her fingers over a plaster bust that looked remarkably like Sir Thomas. She had lost neither of her parents but she knew it was just a matter of time before her own mother was gone. She had inhaled so much dust and fabric fibres on the factory floor that it had settled in her lungs, leaving her with a cough that wracked her body and lungs that fought for every breath. Her Da was of a studier sort, a fisherman, but the years of hauling nets had left him permanently hunched. She missed them, and her brother, but the opportunity she found while looking for work as a lady’s maid in London was worth the homesickness.

Thomas dipped his head in acknowledgement of her sympathy. He was seventeen when his mother had been slain in her bath. Whispers throughout the village held that it was Lady Lucille, the aloof daughter of the mistress of the manor who wielded the knife. Thomas used every ounce of cunning he had to acquit his sister, thinking then it was the ghosts of the house who drove Lucille to the crime, but the damage was done. Her reputation in ruins and mentality affected by the possession, no men came courting. No woman the length and breadth of Britain, hearing the rumours of the murderous Lady Lucille and a house that seemed to be  _alive_ , invited Sir Thomas Sharpe to turn his attention to them. His upcoming trip to the United States served a two-fold purpose. Money, certainly, but also a bride. Perhaps both at once. Miss Nora was alluring but not sufficient for what he- and the house- needed. She had no money for him and the silence of the apparitions upon her arrival spoke volumes.

Slumber continued to evade Nora for the next several nights, leaving her eyes dark and sunken, the skin of her face ashen while faintly purple bags puffed just above her cheekbones. Lucille seemed to be warming toward the young woman and her attraction to Sir Thomas grew with each day. Two days before he was scheduled to set off, Thomas took Nora on a tour of the old mine. The abandoned shafts were too dangerous- he himself had never been down in them- but the machinery that silently stood behind the house and to the right. He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, placing his large hand atop hers, feeling protective of the fragile fingers that curled into the deep crimson velvet of his coat. So far the house had done nothing to alarm this woman but he worried what would happen once he left. It was not that he distrusted Lucille but was she strong enough to resist the spirits? To fight the ghosts of not only the house but of her past? Would Nora’s inherent curiosity lead her into dangerous territory?

Sir Thomas inhaled deeply and returned the quick smile Nora flashed up at him, praying for her sake that the house would remain dormant.  


End file.
